Monthly Archives: October 2010

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This video is not a very good quality one, the message is so powerful and so essential that I’m putting it here anyway. It is Jon Steward speaking at yesterday’s Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington D.C. Jon spoke from his heart to the 150,000 plus participants in this event, and he said more in twelve minutes than the politicians, analysts, experts, pundits, and all the rest have said in millions of words on TV, in print, and on the floor of the Congress of the United States.

I also am including the text from the transcript of the speech in case you can’t get the video to play, or miss what he’s saying. It’s that important.

“I can’t control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.

But unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but it’s existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold it’s magnifying up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.

If we amplify everything we hear nothing. There are terrorists and racists and Stalinist and theocrats but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people but to the racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe not more. The press is our immune system. If we overreact to everything we actually get sicker and perhaps eczema.

And yet with that being said I feel good—strangely, calmly good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a fun house mirror and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass shaped like a month old pumpkin and one eyeball.

So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin- assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own? We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!

The only place we don’t is here or on cable TV. But Americans don’t live here or on cable TV. Where we live our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done. Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do—often something that they do not want to do — but they do it. Impossible things every day that are only made possible by the little reasonable compromises that we all make.

Look on the screen this is where we are this is who we are. (points to the Jumbotron screen which show traffic merging into a tunnel). These cars—that’s a schoolteacher who probably thinks his taxes are too high. He’s going to work. There’s another car-a woman with two small kids who can’t really think about anything else right now. There’s another car swinging I don’t even know if you can see it—the lady’s in the NRA. She loves Oprah. There’s another car—an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter. Another car a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan. But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear—often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.

And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile long 30 foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river. Carved, by the way, by people who I’m sure had their differences. And they do it. Concession by concession. You go. Then I’ll go. You go then I’ll go. You go then I’ll go, ‘Oh my God, is that an NRA sticker on your car? Is that an Obama sticker on your car?’ Well, that’s okay—you go and then I’ll go.

And sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute, but that individual is rare and he is scorned and not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together and the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land.

Sometimes it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together.

If you want to know why I’m here and want I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. You’re presence was what I wanted.

Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you.”

This is the kind of speech you want to see quoted in the history books of the future. Words that changed the direction in which we were traveling. Words that in their eloquence and passion, made a difference. A real difference. Words that transcended partisanship, ideologies, agendas, and prejudices.

And these insightful words were not given by a world leader, president, or congressman. They weren’t given by a professional talk-show host. They weren’t the words of professional network newscaster, and not those of a professional political analyst. They were given by a stand-up comedian who has a comedy show on TV.

We are﻿ at a strange time in the bizarre kingdom we inhabit, when the wisest, sanest, most rational voice of them all is the voice of the court jester.

This video, which seems just right for Halloween, is the latest collaboration between Jeremy Messersmith and animator Eric Power. ” The new video, “A Girl, a Boy, and a Graveyard” chronicles a love story, featuring two werewolves, a graveyard or two, spooky birds, a spider, and Frankenstein thrown in for good measure! Wishing you a Happy Halloween.

I remember listening to Marshall Chapman back in the 70’s. She was playing folk music accompanied by her jangling electric guitar when the other female folkies were strumming acoustic guitars. She had fire and passion and different hook to her music. One thing and another and I lost track of her for the last thirty years. Today I reconnected to her, twelve albums later, on Music Fog’s great video series. Here’s some of what I’ve been missing, from her latest CD, Big Lonesome.

The concert by Over the Rhine last night was well worth attending. Nearly three hours from start to finish, highlighted by nine or more songs from their as-yet unreleased new album, The Long Surrender. I lost count of the number, but it had to constitute nearly the entire album. From my perspective, this new CD will be a must-have for anyone, not just OTR fans. Some great wordsmithing, beautiful melodies, and wonderful performances will highlight this release, that’s for sure.

Above is Karin Bergquist singing the song “Born” from their Drunkards’ Prayer CD. This is my favorite OTR song of all-time and they led off their performance with it. It was the only song they performed from that CD, probably their best one if I had to choose only one. They performed three songs from their Trumpet Child CD, which is their last released studio recording. They threw in a cover song written by their friend, Kim Taylor, and other than that, the entire show was given over to performing the upcoming CD. Most of these songs they had never played live before, so it was a great treat for the packed house audience at the renovated Goshen Theater.

We had front row priority seating, just to the left of center stage. I was able to get some decent photos from that vantage point with the DSLR without using flash. No bobbing heads to shoot over or around is always a plus for this type of thing. The last two photos here were shot at a high ISO setting and so tend to show a little noise, making them appear a little grainy, but that’s normal for these types of lighting situations, in my experience.

In addition to Karin, and of course, her husband Linford Detwiler, who actually constitute the band, they had a friend from Cincinnati on stage with them, and this trio was performing together on stage for the first time. I missed the other man’s name, and apologize for not being able to credit him, but he was integral to the stripped down sound they brought to the show, playing a wide array of percussion instruments, and various stringed ones as well. He also sang some very good harmony vocals and joined in with the on stage banter.

The stories are integral to OTR and their music, and they really know how to tell stories, not just in the songs but also in the lead ins to the songs. They really connected with the audience, but then they had also connected when we had seen them in concert before. They seem to have a natural ease about them and are very comfortable on the stage. This really pulls the audience into the performance, and the fact that they had considerable personal history connected to the Goshen area going back twenty or more years, also seemed to strike the right chords with the audience.

All in all, a great night and a great show. I even forgot my sore back for a couple of hours, and though I’m still a little punchy feeling from the lack of sleep after being out later than I’m used to, I sure am glad that we went to this show. I can’t wait for the release of the new CD, and for the next time they’re in our area so we can see them again.

Regardless of the bad press President Obama receives from the likes of Faux News and the Wall Street Urinal, some recently released statistics tell a better story. The anti-business, Socialist, etc., President may have done something right when it comes to the nation’s business climate, afterall.

According to statistics released by the Commerce Department this week, corporate profits have gone up an astounding 62 percent from the beginning of Obama’s taking over the White House to mid-2010. That is a bigger gain at a faster rate than any comparable 18 month period since the 1920s, and eclipses those of the booming ‘50s and ‘60s, or the increases under Reagan and Clinton.

John McCain’s economic adviser during his 2008 presidential campaign, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has publicly conceded that Obama probably does deserve some of the credit for stabilizing the chaotic financial system he inherited in 2009.

Obama economic adviser Larry Summers has pointed to the profits data to argue that Obama isn’t anti-business, as his critics charge.
“A 65 percent increase in profits over two years is not what you expect from a business-hostile set of policies,” Summers said in June, using preliminary data that was revised in this week’s Commerce Department release.

From Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, quoted here:

There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

And that’s just the beginning:

As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.

If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits — much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.

And there is one primary reason for all of this: the war on drugs. Blacks buy, sell and consume about 13-14% of the drugs bought, sold and consumed in this country — roughly equal to their percentage of the population. Yet blacks make up almost 50% of all incarcerations brought about by drug charges.

The war on drugs is destroying millions of lives and families, not to mention whole communities. It’s time to end it and replace it with a rational system of regulation that focuses on drug abuse as a public health problem rather than on imprisonment.